Writer Archives

Lauren Dibble

Lauren Dibble, BS'09, joined the news@Northeastern team in August 2011 as a media relations specialist. She previously worked for an international PR firm and has dabbled in event and consumer marketing. When not pitching or writing about the fantastic accomplishments of Northeastern students, faculty and alumni, Lauren can be found dodging Boston traffic on her bike, crooning karaoke tunes or planning her next trip overseas.

Last week, Internet brands including Google and Wikipedia launched a cam­paign in response to two bills regarding online piracy: the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Pro­tect Intel­lec­tual Prop­erty Act (PIPA). Thou­sands of web­sites par­tic­i­pated in a 24-​​hour protest of the leg­is­la­tion, and encour­aged web users to sign a peti­tion and con­tact their rep­re­sen­ta­tives. We asked mar­keting pro­fessor Bruce Clark to dis­cuss the impact of com­pa­nies using their brands to take a stand on such issues.

Carole Bell, a post­doc­toral teaching asso­ciate in com­mu­ni­ca­tion studies in the Col­lege of Arts, Media and Design, con­ducts research on how the gay com­mu­nity in por­trayed in pop­ular cul­ture. She wants to find out how the media’s framing of gay rights issues com­pares with society’s stance and how the media’s spot­light on homo­sex­u­ality con­tributes to the public con­ver­sa­tion on gay rights. We asked Bell to explain some of the fac­tors that drive her research.

The race for the Repub­lican pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion is heating up and com­mu­ni­ca­tion style will play no small part in deciding a winner. We asked Richard Katula, pro­fessor of com­mu­ni­ca­tion studies and expert in polit­ical rhetoric, to explain why com­mu­ni­ca­tion is so impor­tant and ana­lyze the com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills of the 2012 GOP pres­i­den­tial candidates.

Enig­matic North Korean leader Kim Jong-​​il died last weekend at the age of 69, and he will be suc­ceeded by his youngest and untested son, Kim Jong-​​un, who is largely unknown to the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity. Given North Korean’s his­tory as an iso­lated and mil­i­taristic state, the tran­si­tion of power presents many ques­tions about the country’s future. We asked Natalie Bor­mann, an aca­d­emic spe­cialist in Northeastern’s Depart­ment of Polit­ical Sci­ence, to dis­cuss what’s next for North Korea.

Whether you cel­e­brate Christmas, Hanukkah or Kwanzaa, gift giving is a part of most hol­iday tra­di­tions this time of year. Many fac­tors go into selecting and pur­chasing hol­iday gifts. We asked Tony Gao, assis­tant pro­fessor of mar­keting in the Col­lege of Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion, to explain some gift-​​giving trends and what moti­vates con­sumers’ gift-​​buying behaviors.

Researchers at CERN, the Euro­pean Center for Nuclear Research, reported this week they are get­ting closer to dis­cov­ering the Higgs boson, a sub­atomic par­ticle that sci­en­tists believe will explain why every­thing in the uni­verse has mass. The Higgs boson is con­sid­ered to be the “Holy Grail” of par­ticle physics, and finding it would be a great sci­en­tific advance­ment. We asked Emanuela Bar­beris, asso­ciate pro­fessor of physics, to explain the Higgs boson and what its dis­covery would mean to the world’s sci­en­tific community.

Fol­lowing par­lia­men­tary elec­tions in Russia on Sunday, protests broke out across the country this week amid alle­ga­tions of voter fraud. The elec­tions kept Prime Min­ister Vladimir Putin and his United Russia party in power, but revealed a drastic decline in sup­port for the party and sig­nif­i­cantly decreased its number of seats in Par­lia­ment. We asked Harlow Robinson, Matthews Dis­tin­guished Uni­ver­sity Pro­fessor and an expert in Russian and Soviet cul­tural his­tory, to ana­lyze the situation.

Ear­lier this month, leg­endary jour­nalist and “60 Min­utes” com­men­tator Andy Rooney passed away at the age of 92, just weeks after announcing he would retire from making weekly appear­ances on the pro­gram. Viewers across the country will miss Rooney’s witty rap­port and unique reporting style. We asked Dan Kennedy, asso­ciate pro­fessor of jour­nalism, to com­ment on Andy Rooney’s legacy and his impact on tele­vi­sion journalism.

Amid the eco­nomic crisis plaguing Europe, the prime min­is­ters of Greece (George Papan­dreou) and Italy (Silvio Berlus­coni) resigned last week. They have since been replaced with the appoint­ments of Lucas Papademos in Greece and Mario Monti in Italy — men with back­grounds in banking and eco­nomics. We asked North­eastern Uni­ver­sity com­mu­ni­ca­tions studies pro­fessor Richard Katula, an expert on Greek cul­ture and Euro­pean affairs, to ana­lyze the eco­nomic and polit­ical tur­moil in Greece and Italy and its impact on the Euro­pean Union.

Trans­porta­tion spending is a hot-​​button issue in Con­gress. House Repub­li­ca­tions have pro­posed a six-​​year, $230 bil­lion exten­sion of the sur­face trans­porta­tion bill to fund projects including roads, bridges and public transit. In the Senate, Democ­rats have pushed back with their own two-​​year, $109 bil­lion bill, arguing that the Repub­lican pro­posal would cut trans­porta­tion spending across the board. We asked busi­ness pro­fessor and infra­struc­ture authority Joseph Giglio to examine the state of America’s infrastructure.

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